A Good Day To Try: Showdown Effect Free Weekend

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Have you ever wanted to dive out of a window to avoid an explosion, while throwing a sword at a ninja? I tried it once but landed badly and ended up with a nasty crick in my neck. It’s the kind of antic that might look amazing when performed by a sinewy star of the silver screen, but my body just isn’t made for that kind of showboating. Even my beard and the confetti in my hair weren’t cushion enough to break the fall. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy playing an action movie archetype in Arrowhead’s multiplayer murder ’em up, The Showdown Effect. My own feeble frame remains safe, even as my avatar slices, dices and explodes. If you’ve steered clear but have an interest, now is the time to try. Free this weekend and currently discounted to £1.99.

I’d quite like to watch a decent action movie tonight. Preferably something relatively new rather than digging back through the eighties again. It’s dangerous to dig in the eighties – I end up finding Human League CDs and that’s an entire weekend gone in a haze of eyeliner and cocktails.

A couple of months ago, I was on a twelve hour flight, I’d read everything I’d brought in my carry-on luggage and I’d seen most of the films available on the tiny, glitchy screen crammed into the seat in front of me. I made the terrible mistake of watching some of Olympus Has Fallen. Fifteen minutes in I felt like my brain had been punched so hard that it had turned into an angry jelly. I couldn’t finish it and yet, on the same flight, I did finish the latest Die Hard. That was morbid curiosity, which probably makes it worse. I spent an hour and a half staring at the twitching corpse of cinema, transfixed. Monstrous.

18 Comments

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yeah paycheck is not bad. i’ve somehow stumbled upon an other, not-really-action-but-quite-great movie, Franklyn. although there is some fighting. goth noir+psychological drama, i think. sounds weird but who would’ve thought space western could work either.

1.No Ping Filter or Display,just “far” or ” near ” Servers.Whatever that means.

2.He almost never shows any Servers ,although sometimes he shows they are out there.
Automatch does not work either,maybe if you wait more than ten Minutes *g*.

3.*IF* it displays some Servers ,they often either disconnect or Autokick or reject and you must try again.
Servers can be set up with Acceptance Rules for Players (Ping etc.) ,but it is not shown in the Browser if you fit those Rules (!).
Want to refresh after several Tries? Go back to Point 1&2!

4. I have found no Standalone Servers. So if the Host stops playing,everyone gets disconnected.Go back to Point 1&2!

Frankly a MP-only Game where you cannot connect to a single Server after 20 Minutes trying is just worthless and broken.

i heard that White house down is actually better, less serious (but just as dumb). it is painful sometimes to watch movies nowadays. the latest die hard made me say “are you even kidding me” multiple times, out loud, which i rarely do, even when people are around

My Netflix account has led me to many foreign action films that are very good. If you don’t mind subtitles, you should watch The Good, The Bad, The Weird, which is a Korean western film meets action film. It’s fantastic. Also check out The Warrior’s Way and Bunraku (Bunraku is actually French, I think?). Then there’s The Thieves, which a heist / action hybrid that is also apparently the highest grossing Korean film ever. It’s awesome.

Do martial arts films count? If so, I can recommend the two films starring Iko Uwais: Merantau and The Raid (called The Raid: Redemption in the US), with the caveat that they are both quite grim. Then there’s the Chilean movies starring Marko Zaror: Kiltro, Mirageman and Mandrill. They’re a lot of fun.

Finally, for a non-foreign offering, watch Shoot ‘Em Up if you have not done so already.

Watch Dredd. Better yet, buy it. It’s a really shockingly good movie that’s almost certainly not going to get a sequel, though you’ll have a hard time finding a movie that deserves one more. Maybe Pacific Rim…

Pacific Rim was the most fun I’ve had in a theater since 300 at least. Most of my friends would probably call me a movie snob/hipster, but Pacific Rim really was good in a very weird way – the story and dialogue is kind of weird and deliberately resembles a B-movie in many ways but it stays on track and is very exciting.

It’s frustrating that it didn’t do very well in the box office because it was really quite well-made. And really, the studio is to blame for the failure, since they marketed it as Transformers knockoff when it’s so much better than those terrible movies. It’s a great love letter to ’80s and ’90s cartoons and mecha anime. A friend called it “Power Rangers for grown-ups” which is the most fitting description I’ve seen.

I have relatively fond memories of Murder at 1600 and The Peacemaker, both of which (IMDb tells me) are from 1997. Was this one of the last years when CGI wasn’t so cheap it got used throughout the movie instead of a script and actors, or something?

I’ve had a couple of times when my Internet connection cut out while I was playing Cardhunter, and that was bad enough; I’m guessing real-time multiplayer isn’t for me. This sounds like fun, though.

This is actually an extremely fun little deathmatch game, but the shitty server browser coupled with the sporadic player activity means that unless you have dedicated friends to play with, you should probably give it a miss. Even one friend is enough, it’s a great 1v1 game as well.